The Apple Watch’s took more practice to draw quickly enough to form whole letters, while the Samsung and Android Wear scrolling method sometimes moves more quickly than we can write.

While testers found the drawing pad feature fun, it wasn’t as efficient as typing on either the numpad or QWERTY keyboards. For custom text responses, they preferred navigating the keyboard, tiny as it is, or simply grabbing their phone. For simpler texts, we’d trust Siri or Google to accurately transcribe our message, or use a simple emoji or preset “Thanks!” or “I’m busy right now” to respond instantly right from our watch.

One of the rites of passage for new smart watch owners is picking out the perfect watch face to decorate your smart watch. Depending on the style of face you choose, your smart watch can blend in with a traditional watch face or you can choose a style with customizable widgets, so your favorite apps are accessible right from the display. All of our contenders offer multiple custom faces and you can download others either online or from third-party apps.

One of the Fossil’s faces blends the traditional watch display of time and date with up to three featured widgets. Widgets are also customizable, and give you an instant window into your calendar, your power level, or an immediate access to your favorite apps or contacts.

We gave extra points to bands that were comfortable and easy to swap out for a new style. A few watches needed specialized tools to change out bands — the Movado Connect needs a tiny screwdriver, but we still preferred this to the Moto 360, with its non-removable band. Most of the watches have tiny pins that you pull back to unfasten the band, though the Apple Watch uses a button, which allows you to slide the band in or out of a narrow groove.

The LG Watch was the only one that received negative points for band quality. After putting it on and taking it off three times, its stiff (read: horrible feeling) and rough leather band already started showing signs of wear.

More so than bands, testers called out the watches themselves for being uncomfortable. Some simply had what felt like huge watch faces, like the Armani Emporio, which is definitely a large statement piece. Others, like the Movado Connect, have a thicker watch which perches uncomfortably, like you’ve tied a miniature smartphone to your wrist rather than put on a watch.

The Apple Watch was a tester favorite thanks to its high-tech appearance, easy navigation, and for being the most immediately customizable watch (no third-party apps required). In tests, Apple did well, with an average call response time of 9 seconds. We also loved that we could even answer phone calls through the watch, thanks to its tiny speaker. Some other watches have the option of “answering,” but all this does is answer the call on your phone, subjecting the person on the other end to the sounds of you rustling through your purse or jacket pocket for it.

With the newest version of Anki’s smart toy racing concept, Anki Overdrive, they boast one of the most original connected toy experiences on the market. The idea is super simple – build a physical track (full of sharp turns, elevations and quick straights), place your connected Anki cars on the track and let the Anki Overdrive app do the rest for you. With nine AI personalities that change with how you play, it’s just like a racing video game you can customize, Scalextric style in your living room. Thanks to a regular flow of updates, the game is now better than ever with the need the scan the track before every race now eliminated if you’ve made no changes to it since the last race.

We're going to get the Fast Furious edition of Overdrive reviewed soon, too. Once we do, we'll update this list with our thoughts.

Well, this is a lot of fun. Even if you're not a fan of the Fast Furious franchise, there is a lot to like about Anki's latest release. The cars are fantastic, the effects and track are superb and there is a real 'game' feeling to the whole thing. Be warned, though: it's a little fiddly to setup.

There were three tech journalists scratching their heads at some points of the setup but this was mainly due to connecting up the cars with the accompanying app. It eventually worked but we did have to follow the 'reset' instructions to get the cars moving. Once done, though, it's an exhilarating ride, one you can have on your own (competing against and AI driver) or with friends.

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